[In "Thy Brother's Wife"] Greeley proposes to show us how an American Catholic bishop … can love his brother's wife for most of a lifetime and still keep the faith as he fights for a more humane and sexually informed Catholicism.

Greeley's principal characters are a tyrannical Chicago multimillionaire named Mike Cronin; his two sons, Paul and Sean; and his adopted daughter, Nora Riley….

Mike decides things, and he has decided that someday Paul will be President of the United States and Sean will become a cardinal. (p. 7)

Trouble comes because, while everyone sets out to fulfill Mike Cronin's expectations, Sean and Nora are attracted to each other like magnets, and Paul is as faithless in marriage as he is opportunistic in politics. Paul's only redeeming quality is his devotion to his brother. Thus, in the middle of the novel, he willingly places Nora in Sean's care when he...